Secret Skin
by roane
Summary: Sherlock thinks he knows everything there is to know about John. Sherlock is wrong.


_**AN:**__ The first time I saw this fanart (tumblr: /post/44478396224/the-idea-of-our-boys-tattooed-ha s-been-going) of mydwynter's, it took my breath away. Then I started thinking about a prowly, predatory sort of John, and the two merged in my head and turned into this._

_Thanks to thisprettywren for the handholding as I tried to make this come out okay, and to provocatrixxx for a speedy and helpful beta. And of course, to mydwynter for the fantabulous art._

* * *

"Everyone has secrets, Sherlock," John said, continuing an earlier discussion. "You of all people must agree with that." They were both full and warm, and settled companionably by the fire in 221b with their glasses. It was late in the evening, and both of them were in that pleasant state that just precedes drunkenness, John with scotch, Sherlock with a deep ruby port.

"Everyone _tries_ to keep secrets," Sherlock corrected. "No one succeeds for very long."

"Oh, especially not with you around?" said John.

Sherlock ignored John's smirk. "That's what I do," he agreed.

"So you're saying that no one can keep a secret from you." John cradled his glass in both hands, looking into its depths.

"You are all as transparent as window glass," Sherlock declared. And it was true. He saw the obvious things, like Donovan's wretched affair with Anderson, but he also saw the less obvious, like the fact that Donovan's real interest was in Anderson's wife, and she was settling for the next best thing.

"Of course," John said. "I should have guessed as much."

The subject changed and they talked on for a while longer before they each went to bed.

Sherlock had forgotten all about it until he stepped into the flat on a chilly evening about a week later. John was standing shirtless in front of the hearth, hands behind his back in parade rest, his head bowed.

Sherlock closed the door behind himself silently, and couldn't look away. They'd been living together for nearly nine months-_how_ had Sherlock seen no sign of what was hiding under John's endless parade of jumpers and shirts? This certainly explained why John buttoned his shirts to the top button.

John's chest and shoulders and sides were covered in intricate tattoos. The fire served to backlight the warm tones of his skin; it obscured some of the details while delineating others. From where Sherlock stood, he could make out the major pieces.

Over John's chest was an elaborate biological depiction of a heart, but one caged in an organic, thorny-looking trap. What in John's past had led to such a dramatic envisioning of his emotional state?

Thick Celtic knotwork wrapped up around his shoulders (and, Sherlock was willing to assume, across his back as well) and around both biceps. The knotwork fed into the cage around John's heart and spread in smoky, fainter swirls down his arms and sides. Sherlock had known about John's Scottish ancestry of course, but hadn't realised that John took it so seriously. It seemed he did, for in addition to the knotwork, there was a Celtic lion's head over his right shoulder, and the Watson clan crest curled over his right side.

The left side of John's torso seemed to speak to his military past: the RAMC badge decorated that shoulder cap, and along his side were words-Sherlock couldn't make them out in the half-light of the sitting room, but knowing John for the Englishman he was, he suspected Kipling or possibly Tennyson. The scar that ended John's military career lay just over the knotwork on the left shoulder-strongly suggesting that at least some of the artwork had been done after John had come home.

Then John lifted his head, and Sherlock drew a slightly shaky breath. There was a half-smile on John's lips and his eyes were heavy-lidded with amusement. "Sherlock."

"John." Sherlock didn't trust himself to say more, caught by the sudden tension in the room. It was as if there was a thread running between the two of them, and an invisible hand was pulling it taut. It felt like a test of some sort. John was waiting for his reaction. He would have to wait until Sherlock knew what his reaction _was_.

He stepped closer, and he could see the incredible detail inked into the faintly golden tones of John's skin. They were clearly well-healed, although the lines of the knotwork were ridged, raised up from John's skin. Without thinking about what he was doing, Sherlock reached up towards the knotwork under John's scar, curious to feel the difference in texture there.

His hand never made it. John moved lightning-quick and caught Sherlock by the wrist, holding his hand away from John's body. Sherlock dragged his eyes away from John's tattoos to John's face, and fought down a gasp.

John looked at him steadily with a hawk's gaze, and Sherlock, who had made a career out of staring down the weaker-minded, had never felt so much like a mouse before in his life.

"John?" Sherlock hated the uncertain sound of his own voice, directed at John of all people, John who-before this moment-he would have sworn he knew inside and out, body and soul.

John smiled, and it did nothing to decrease his predatory expression. "I didn't give you permission to touch," John said quietly. "Yet."

"What-" Sherlock cleared his throat and started again. "What makes you think-" Even he couldn't lie well enough to finish the question. The way John was looking at him was making Sherlock's skin feel too small for his body, an unpleasantly pleasant itch of need that he'd felt before in his lifetime, of course, and had acted on. However, with two exceptions, he had never allowed that need-that, to use a distasteful word, _desire_-to influence his actions in any way. The first exception was standing in front of him. The second was a dead traitor-at least as far as the British government was concerned.

In short, Sherlock had always known what he wanted from John, but never expected he'd get it-and he never suspected this.

"Because you couldn't stop yourself just now," John said. "And that's fine. I always knew we'd wind up here."

"And where are we, exactly?" Sherlock asked, trying to recover some of his composure, trying to ignore the gentle pressure of John's fingers still curling around his wrist, the warmth from the fire at his back sinking into Sherlock's damp, chilly skin.

"I wanted to tell you my secrets," John said, letting go. "I wanted to see what secrets you've been keeping." His hands returned to their place at his back, and John began to walk in a slow circle around Sherlock, looking him up and down. Sherlock forced himself to look straight ahead and wondered if John could possibly see the pulse fluttering in Sherlock's throat. His mind worked at a fever pitch, trying to follow each of the possible paths out of this situation, to take what he thought he knew of John to predict what he might do next.

Only now Sherlock began to suspect he was woefully short on data where John Watson was concerned.

"You're wondering what this means," John said. "This seemed the fastest way to show you that you don't know everything there is to know about me, Sherlock Holmes."

"John, I never said-"

"'You are all as transparent as window glass,' I believe you said." John laughed quietly, and the sound seemed to find a home in the pit of Sherlock's gut. "Shall I tell you what I know about you?"

Sherlock thought of all the times he'd asked John to give his opinion on a crime scene, and all of the times John had missed everything important. Except Sherlock wasn't a crime scene, and John understood people almost as well as Sherlock understood toxins and trauma.

"You're not a virgin, no matter what that ridiculous brother of yours has to say," John said, his breath warm against the nape of Sherlock's neck. "I know you wanted the Adler woman. For all I know, you had her."

Sherlock shivered, but didn't move. He hadn't. There wasn't time in Karachi, and besides, Irene was only after the chase. Once she knew she had Sherlock's interest, she lost hers.

"You sublimate sexual desire more thoroughly than anyone I've ever met. You think it contributes to your genius to stay aloof and detached." John was in front of him now and reached up to tip Sherlock's chin down so that he was looking John in the face. "But sometimes... you just... can't... do it, can you?" Keeping his fingertip beneath Sherlock's chin, John leaned in slowly-slow enough to give Sherlock plenty of time to pull away or stop him. While John was still a few centimetres off, Sherlock ran the tip of his tongue over his bottom lip, then closed the distance between them.

They only touched at the lips and John's finger at Sherlock's chin. Sherlock's hands were positively itching to run over the ink on John's chest and shoulders, but he hadn't been given permission. _Yet._ Such a small word filled with such overwhelming possibilities.

John's hands slid up either side of Sherlock's face, fingers brushing just past his hairline. Sherlock found himself putting his hands behind his own back to keep from grabbing, and instead let John do what he would. John parted his lips and urged Sherlock to do the same with the tip of his tongue. Sherlock opened and was invaded, the unfamiliar tannic taste of John's mouth shocking and thrilling him. He clasped his fingers together tight in the small of his back, tight enough to hurt, trying to control his breathing as John seemed intent on devouring his mouth.

John crowded against him now, their bodies pressing together as tightly as their mouths. Although John wore only a pair of soft trousers and Sherlock was still fully dressed right down to his scarf and overcoat, Sherlock felt exposed. John _knew_ him, clearly better than Sherlock had known John.

Then John broke the kiss just enough to gasp against Sherlock's mouth two words: "_Touch me._"

It was a command, it was a benediction, it was a plea. Sherlock hardly knew where to start. He curled his hands under and around John's shoulders, feeling warm skin and the slightly raised patterns of ink tracing beneath his skin. John let go of Sherlock's face and started pulling at his coat. There was a moment of awkward struggle: Sherlock didn't want to let go of John's shoulders, but had to if John was going to remove his coat. Finally Sherlock compromised an arm at a time, and the heavy wool fell to the floor.

Sherlock was so distracted when John went back to kissing him that he didn't realise he'd been moving backwards across the sitting room. Not, that is, until his shins bumped against the table in front of the couch. John manoeuvred him around the table while pulling at the buttons on his shirt. Sherlock protested feebly against John's mouth when he heard at least one of the buttons pop off. He stopped protesting when John brushed his shirt off his shoulders.

Standing chest to chest, Sherlock imagined he could feel the designs on John's skin smearing onto his own like wet newsprint, leaving traces of John's past everywhere they touched. John nudged him just a bit, and Sherlock half-sat, half-fell onto the couch, and before he could react, John followed him, straddling his lap. But when John leaned back in to kiss him, Sherlock put a hand over the heart caged on John's chest to stop him. He was momentarily derailed by the feeling of John's heart, his actual heart, beating against his palm from its cage of ribs. It gave Sherlock an uncanny feeling, as if the almost lurid heart on John's skin were real. Now, up close, Sherlock could see that the cage around the heart was rigged to explode. Was it a warning? Or a promise?

It seemed a promise, from the way John looked from Sherlock's hand over his heart up to Sherlock's face, as if to ask, _You're stopping me?_ John took his hand and pulled it around to rest at the small of John's back, and slid down Sherlock's lap, bringing them tight against one another again. He didn't give Sherlock a chance to stop him again-although he could have, if he'd really wanted to-but leaned in and bit at Sherlock's chin.

Sherlock tipped his head back as if on instinct, baring his throat to John in a gesture that he knew would read both as submission and as trust. John surged forward and ran his tongue up the line of Sherlock's jugular vein. Oh god, it burned its way into him like nothing Sherlock could remember, and he whimpered. John responded by tangling his fingers in the curls at the base of Sherlock's skull and tilting his head back still farther. John lowered his head again, and his mouth against Sherlock's throat made Sherlock's head spin, and the heat from John's hardening cock against his belly made it hard to breathe. He _wanted_, oh god, how he wanted.

He closed his eyes and focused on the hot-cold-hot dampness of John's breath and tongue against his neck, on the scrape of John's teeth over his veins. John was growling in counterpoint to Sherlock's whimpers, and slowly he became aware of their movements. their hips rocking in an unmistakable rhythm: John thrusting against Sherlock's belly and Sherlock thrusting against John's arse. The sudden knowledge that he could-that he _needed_to-fuck or be fucked made Sherlock dizzy.

Sherlock's hand was still at the small of John's back and he slipped it beneath the elastic waistband of his trousers, fingertips brushing the warm, soft skin of John's arse. Then John moved his mouth to Sherlock's ear and murmured, "I should have known. You want me to ride you with your prick in my arse until you come." Sherlock gasped but didn't say anything. "Don't you," John pressed.

"Yes." The word was hardly more than a breath. "_Please_." How had it come to this so quickly? How had John reduced him to a quivering mass of aching flesh, barely capable of speech, much less rational thought-and with nothing more than his mouth and his inked, decorated body?

Except it was more than that, and Sherlock knew it. John had said "I always knew we'd wind up here," and Sherlock had known it too. Everything from the moment he'd felt John's body heat in a borrowed mobile and seen traces of John's past hanging around him like flashing signs, had been leading them here.

"Later," John said, sucking at Sherlock's earlobe, making him shiver. "This first time I want to watch you come all over my hands."

And just like that, it was exactly what Sherlock wanted as well, his mind reduced to a low-level buzzing hum of nothingness, focused on nothing but the physical, on the 'transport' he so often derided. When John unfastened his trousers, Sherlock lifted his hips (and John) just enough for John to push his trousers and pants out of the way. It left Sherlock sitting rather uncomfortably on his belt, but by then John was trailing his fingers over Sherlock's achingly hard cock and nothing else mattered.

"Look at you," John said, resting his forehead against Sherlock's as he looked down. "So hard for me."

"Yes. God, yes." He should say something more. He should be eloquent in his desire, but the words weren't there. All there were were John's cool fingers against Sherlock's hot, hard flesh, wrapping around him now and starting to stroke.

John gave him a steady stream of words, rhythmic, vulgar, encouraging, falling into Sherlock's ears with the same rocking movement as John's hand on his cock, as if John were stroking him inside and out. It had been so long, even since Sherlock had done this for himself; with the added sensation of John's small, calloused hand and John's beautiful, filthy crooning in Sherlock's ears, this was going to be over quickly.

"So fucking wet," John was growling, "Christ, look at you." His hand was starting to blur-or maybe that was Sherlock's vision-and Sherlock felt the first tumbling spinning pleasure building in his thighs and gut.

"John. John," Sherlock gasped, trying to tell him, to warn him, and then it was all a warm, quicksilver blank as his hips and cock jerked under John's hands, spurting white-hot over John's hands and Sherlock's belly. Dimly, Sherlock heard his own cries intertwining with John's groans, as if watching Sherlock come were enough to make John come too.

John scooted back on Sherlock's lap enough to give himself room, planting one hand squarely in the middle of the sticky mess on Sherlock's belly. His heart still racing, Sherlock tipped his head up to watch as John shoved his trousers and pants out of the way and wrapped his hands, both dotted and filmed with Sherlock's come, around his cock. God, Sherlock wanted more than anything to push John back, to lean down and taste himself on John's cock, but the intent in John's eyes kept him pinned to the sofa.

Sherlock watched, breathless. John's head was tilted back, tendons in his neck straining. He was biting his bottom lip hard as he fucked his hands in Sherlock's lap, his arse sliding a little against the tops of Sherlock's thighs. The only sounds he made were a series of low, grunting breaths that enraptured Sherlock. He wasn't sure if he was allowed to touch, but he had to. He pressed his hand over the heart on John's chest, again feeling the hammering beat beneath it as John's breathing picked up a small hitch with each stroke. Sherlock couldn't decide whether to watch John's hands, or his own, so he moved between them, watching John's sweetly sticky hands squeezing and pulling at his own cock, watching his own hands smooth across John's chest, tracing knotwork, tweaking his nipples to watch him jump.

Without warning, John froze and his cock started pulsing in his hands. Sherlock found himself leaning in, wanting to feel John coming against his skin. He wrapped one hand around the back of John's neck and pulled him in for a hard kiss, coaxing John's lower lip from between his teeth and sucking it into his own mouth. John broke the kiss as the spasms stopped and leaned his forehead against Sherlock's, panting through his mouth.

They were quiet, breathing together. Then John sat up on Sherlock's knees, watching him with a half-smile. He seemed to be anticipating something, and rested his hands against his thighs and waited. "Go on," John said. "I know you want to."

Sherlock ran the tips of his fingers over the caged heart tracing the intricate knotwork that led from it over to the RAMC badge. "This knotwork was done after you were shot," Sherlock said. "It's over the scarring, not broken by it."

John nodded.

"I won't ask how you managed to afford it," Sherlock said, tilting a smile up at him, "but I think I understand why a flatshare might have been necessary." He traced down John's side, watching the muscles twitch beneath his fingers. John showed no other sign of being ticklish. He leaned over to read the writing on John's left side: "'And so hold on when there is nothing in you / Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"' Kipling, of course. It was one of the two." He looked up to see John smirking at him. "Nice to see you're predictable in some ways."

"Are you finished?" John asked mildly, his eyes showing nothing but patience, no sign of irritation.

"I've just started," Sherlock said. "There's a great deal of meaning written on your skin, John. And I intend to study it all," he leaned forward and pressed his open mouth to the knotwork beneath the scar, feeling the raised lines beneath his tongue before continuing, "...very closely."

"Then we'd better get back to work," John murmured, slipping off his lap and holding out his hand. "Your room is best, I think. You haven't even seen my back yet." Sherlock took his hand and let John pull him out of the room.


End file.
